Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I knew it as soon as I saw it. I was sitting there in the front row of the theater watching Beyoncé’s awesome new concert film “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” and dancing along with the Beyhive when we were plopped into that scene that everyone was talking about. It’s black and white. Someone suggests they cut the song “Diva” from the setlist. Blue Ivy, sitting off to the side, leaps into the adult conversation blaring, no, no, you can’t lose that song. She’s bringing way too much energy into a professional brainstorm. But kids do that. The thing that made my jaw drop is that Beyoncé let us see her scolding her child.
“Blue, baby,” she says firmly. “You gonna have to take it down a few notches.” She came in with that mama tone. We all know what that’s like. But instead of hushing, Blue continues pleading in favor of “Diva.” In response, Bey does not silence her child. She affirms Blue’s right to her opinion while saying you’ve got to express yourself more calmly. And then, as Beyoncé is telling Blue about cutting people off, the film cuts Beyoncé off and leaps into her onstage doing “Diva.”
So much of “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” is about family. We see a lot of her husband, Jay-Z, some of her parents, Matthew and Tina, and a little of her two younger kids, Rumi and Sir. But the second biggest character in all of this is her oldest child. So much of this film is about how Beyoncé the global superstar and Beyoncé the mother vacillate within Bey. As Wesley Morris said in the New York Times, “We witness a parent in an assortment of resonant parenting moods.” Morris also notes that this is a “moving, unexpectedly transparent feat of self-portraiture.” We have not ever seen this deeply into Beyoncé’s family life.
She talks about trying to…
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